Isn't that neat!!!

Application developers (programmers) are susceptible to a disease called "Isn't that neat!". It results in features that don't really do much for the user, or that work in funny ways that make them hard to use. The developer's satisfaction comes from having done a good job on the new feature, without thinking too much about the poor user. This disease is sneaky, and it strikes with out warning. By the time the developer realizes he has caught it, a lot of time and/or work has gone down the drain, and users may be unhappy. The bruises that appear are usually on the ego.

I know all this because I have been there. I have been working on Rods Railroad Directory for a long time, and I have gone through several major changes, sometimes making it better, and sometimes making it (much) worse. Over this period of time, I have learned a lot about how to make the data entry easier while making the search much more effective.

An discussion can be found on my Yahoo! group, indexguy, where I suggest a way to compare indices. The more consistent the results of a search, the better.

The antidote for this disease is to step back as far as you can from the project. Then, look at the neats with a very critical eye. Look at them through your users' eyes. Talk to your users and value their opinions. Will the neats be of any real use, or will they just stroke your ego? Will they help your users do what they have to, or want to, do? Keep a tight rein on your enthusiasm for new features.

Rod Goodwin
indexguy

Yahoo! Groups

I also have several posts on the Yahoo! Group "indexguy". These are more specific to Rods Railroad Directory and comparisons with the new NMRA index.

There is a Yahoo! Group for the NMRA index, rrmagindex, moderated by Clint Hyde, the developer of the index.

Between my blog and the two Yahoo! groups, you should be able to get a very good sense of what is going on in the railroad/railway indexing world.

Rod Goodwin
indexguy

Doing a Search

In this post, I will discuss the following indices, all except Google being dedicated to railroad/railway subjects:

• Rod Railroad Directory
• The reincarnated Kalmbach index
• The new NMRA index
• Google

There are various ways that search engines accept and process what you place in the search box. First, this is what happens when you search for a single word:

• Rods Railroad Directory uses a simple proprietary search engine which will return any item containing the word, or a word starting with you input ("box" gets items with "boxcar" or "boxes" or "boxcab"). That's an implied wildcard.
• Kalmbach does the same.
• The NMRA returns only items which contain the exact word.
• Google uses a very sohpisticated search engine, which will return items containing the word, or variations of the word, or similar sounding words.

Now, add another word to the search box:

• Rods Railroad Directory uses an implied "AND". If you search for "passenger depot" or "depot passenger", you will be shown only items containing both words. Adding subsequent words NEVER increases the number of items returned. I call that "narrowing the search".
• Kalmbach does the same.
• The NMRA index you have to think about. It is not nearly as simple. It defaults to an "implied OR" scheme. If you search for "nyc boxcar", you get everything with "nyc" and everything with "boxcar" intermingled. Adding another word will give you a longer list to sort through. If you want only items containing both "nyc" and "boxcar", you have to put "AND" (uppercase required) between them.
  
  You can search for consecutive exact words by putting them in quotes. "norfolk southern" will get all items containing that phrase.
• Google is, once again, extremely sophisticated in its approach. It appears to return an "implied AND" list, followed by an "implied OR" list. Adding another word to your search usually gets you a longer list. It can be quite confusing to scan through.

Now, let's assume you want to find all NYC items, except boxcars:

• In Rods Railroad directory, search for "nyc -boxcar". The hyphen appended to the front of the second word says to ignore any items containing this word.
• The Kalmbach appears to have no facility for this.
• In the NMRA index, you preceed the unwanted word with "NOT".
• I will not try to figure out Google. A search for "nyc boxcar" returned about 42,000 itms. Using their advanced search page and specifying to leave out items with "boxcar", it returned a list of about 239,000,000 items. In the search box, it had placed "nyc -boxcar". With the exclusion, I expeced less on the second search.

So there you are. Choose your own poison.

Rod Goodwin
indexguy